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Quickie Review: Don’t Move (2013) short horror film

Don’t Move (2013) – short horror film

‘Don’t Move’ is the 8th slice in Bloody Cuts’ anthology of short horror films, made by a team of UK film-makers on low budgets.

Directed by Anthony Melton, Produced by Ben Franklin and written by David Scullion it stars Rachel Bright and Jake Hendriks alongside Kate Braithwaite, Beth Cooper, Ian Whyte, Calvin Dean and Martin Skipper.

In keeping with the ‘devil deals gone wrong’ theme this August, we take a quickie look at a great short film from 2013.

Set immediately after a summoning spell on the Ouija goes horribly wrong, with one person’s heart already ripped out, we join the remaining friends as they play silent statues, trying to survive the hideous demon they’ve (accidentally?) summoned.

The creature is a special effects joy both in its solid form and its eerie, smoky, slithering one too, stalking the survivors. It won’t leave yet because the rules are very clear. It must take five souls with it, and only one of them may survive. As its starts it’s one down, four to go…luckily, it can’t really see you. Unless of course, you move, or make any noise…

Like ‘Don’t Breathe’ and ‘A Quiet Place’, keeping silent is going to save you…but someone else might screw that all up. What’s brilliant about this is that the tension really comes down to human selfishness. Putting aside whether people who’d summon a demon, especially one with this type of M.O., are trustworthy in the first place, what ensues is a tense, gunslinger-esque shootout as mobile phones and loud noises are used to get another person in the demon’s sights. Or lack of sight. They get away with whispering between them slightly too much, but this demon might easily be toying with them too.

Reiterating once again that messing with demons only brings destruction and chaos, ‘Don’t Move’ is a schlocky fun ride, gleefully tense and a gory contrast to last week’s more austere Paper Game short film.